Lots of children, no school places. We need the council to listen to us now!
Bex Davey's Page
Profile Information
- Where do you live?
- In Long Ashton
- About Me:
- Hi there, My husband and I have lived in Long Ashton for the past 7 years and have always loved the fact that this is a great village with a real community feel.
Having recently moved house within the village a major factor that stopped us moving out of the area (besides friends and loving the village) was that LA held local schools which we would like our 2 yr old to attend, giving us not only the opportunity to walk to school, but providing our daughter with potential local friends.
As a Christian family we attend church most Sundays at 'City Church ' , and on a professional basis I work as a staff nurse at Southmead Hospital in the Medical Assessment Unit.
About
Badge
© 2009 Created by Tabetha Newman on Ning. Create a Ning Network!
Comment Wall (4 comments)
You need to be a member of Long Ashton school crisis to add comments!
Join this Ning Network
Have to admit that I haven't written yet as up to my eyeballs with appeals etc. Looks like you may have saved me a job though...
hope you are all well - xx
The questions that we prepared follow. Please do let us have additional questions/comments - we would really appreciate your input.
Legislative requirements make it difficult to build additional classrooms on either site - I'll post more on this later this week.
Best wishes,
Hannah
Questions regarding Long Ashton Schools Situation – Thursday 27th March 2008
The Past
1. Why are there insufficient school places in Long Ashton for the children entering reception 2008?
In particular:
2. Why were section 106 contributions not obtained for school development from Barrett Homes when the 100 houses were built adjacent to Theynes Croft in 2002?
3. When planning school expansion following the Wimpey development (350 houses), were earlier build such as Theynes Croft taken into consideration when projecting school admission numbers?
4. How many additional school places were created directly as a result of the Wimpey development (ie in calculating the necessary s106 contribution)?
5. Was additional capacity created equally across each of the school years? And if not, why not?
6. Were projected admission figures altered to reflect the inclusion of flats in the new Wimpey development? If so by how much were they reduced?
7. How many units were finally built on the Wimpey site and of these, how many are flats?
8. We understand that the s106 contribution was used in its entirety on the rebuild of Northleaze School. As it is highly unlikely that any of the children living on the Wimpey development will attend Northleaze, why was the contribution not used to expand the closer Birdwell School?
9. Why was Northleaze rebuilt with such limited additional capacity? Was it considered possible to retain the existing Northleaze site and splitting infant and juniors? If so, why was this option rejected?
10. How much was the old Northleaze site sold for? What has happened to that money?
The Present
1. Do you feel that excluding 23 children from our local schools (over 30% of this year’s admission) is acceptable?
2. We have repeatedly been told that, “The Council takes its strategic obligations to provide sufficient numbers of school places within school clusters very seriously”. From this comment, can I conclude that you do not feel that the Council has any obligation to provide sufficient numbers of school places within an individual community (such as Long Ashton)?
3. Does the Council really think that allocating overspill to a school 10 miles away (for example Yatton which is in our cluster) is adequate when planning for school places?
The Future
1. What do you propose to do to resolve the situation?
In particular:
2. Can you please clarify why the two village schools cannot be expanded? Is this because of a lack of building space or due to legislative requirements for a minimum amount of playing field per capita? We have had conflicting information regarding the possibility of expansion at Northleaze.
3. As a short-term solution, could the pre-school class at Northleaze be relocated back to their previous accommodation at Church House thus freeing up a classroom at the school.
4. We understand that the Council owns land adjacent to Birdwell School. Could you please confirm? Could this land be used for building additional accommodation or as the necessary additional ‘green land’ required by legislation for playing fields?
5. Does the ‘green land’ have to be adjacent to the school? Could the field donated by Wimpey be used as an additional playing field for Birdwell School to satisfy legislative requirements?
6. Does the Council own any additional areas of land in Long Ashton or is there potential to obtain such in the village (for example we’ve been informed that land could be obtained in the near vicinity of Northleaze School)?
7. Building work continues in the village. Should further expansion be permitted if the village has insufficient infrastructure to support it?
The following figures of expected reception intake, based on the Council’s own pupil projection methodology have been provided:
Estimates at September
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
Birdwell 34 62 67 56 61
Northleaze 48 48 53 52 52
At what point do you think the Council will accept that there has been a planning failure and that something needs to be done to rectify the situation? Would it not be better to act now than to wait until the situation reaches crisis point?